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One of the most staggering things I reported recently was the running costs of used cars versus new cars, it was cheaper to run a new car than a used car. Now to add to the pain of used car motoring, statistics from secondary warranty suppler, Warranty Direct, shows that one in three repairs carried out on cars from 3 years old to seven years old is as a result of wear and tear. The small print in most of these warranty policies excludes such items so whilst motorists who take out these policies Read more »

Beware of service intervals. As most people know service intervals have been extending and it’s not uncommon for cars to have 18,000 or 20,000 mile service intervals. If you are a low mileage user this could suggest that if you had a car for 3 years, covering around 6,000 or less miles per annum, you wouldn’t have to carry out a single service to retain the car’s warranty. But this is unlikely to be the case as most Read more »

The warranty arguments are starting to build – exactly as I predicted. Warranty Direct, one of the largest providers of aftermarket warranty insurance, first of all complained that Kia and Hyundai’s new extended warranty adverts did not make it clear that the warranty had a 100,000 mile ceiling, the same as the widely promoted Vauxhall ‘Lifetime’ warranty. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) agreed Read more »

If you are looking to take out an aftermarket vehicle warranty (that’s a warranty that you take out when the manufacturer’s warranty has run out) you can check to see if the provider has signed into the code of practice provided by the auto watchdog Motor Codes, unless it’s an AA warranty and I can tell you that they aren’t. The code was set up to help customers by ensuring that the warranties provided by the warranty Read more »

If you’re an avid reader of my newsletter and blog you will have read that you no longer need to have your car serviced by a main dealer in order to maintain your warranty. The rules that were relaxed several years ago that prevented you from having your car serviced wherever you wanted are known as the EU Block Exemption Rules. These rules have just been reviewed again and the rules pretty much left as they Read more »

We’re encouraged to keep cars for longer as the manufacturers review their warranty periods. Toyota have announced a warranty extension to 5 years/100,000 miles joining Hyundai on 5 years also and Kia now on 7 years. These being the only manufacturers to announce the extended warranties across their full range of cars. Fiat now offers 5 years but only on the Bravo. The move, according to Toyota, has Read more »

It seems that the manufacturers are not going to fight a price war but outdo each other by providing more for free as part of the purchase package. The latest has been the extended warranty. Toyota had to react to the drop in sales following their recall problems by extending their standard warranty from 3 years to 5 years. In the meantime Kia/Hyundai have reacted following their massive growth during the Read more »

I’ve often pointed out to customers that they can now have their new cars serviced at non franchised dealers and still retain their warranty cover. This resulted from the changes that were made to the EU Block Exemption rules removing the stranglehold that manufacturers had over the servicing of new vehicles during the warranty period, that was cunningly extended by most manufacturers to 3 years. In an effort to Read more »

Hitachi Capital Vehicle Solutions have warned drivers to ensure that they don’t risk their lives and the lives of others by missing services on cars. In a study carried out by Ford it was shown that 15% of Britons miss out a service in order to save money during this recession whilst 18% don’t have breakdown cover. The biggest culprits are the 18-24 age group who miss services with over a third not having a breakdown Read more »

Service intervals have crept out with some cars not needing a first service until it is 2 years old. Some of the earliest first service intervals are still a minimum of 12 months but there is a problem with this. You see years ago, by the end of the first year, your car would have had 2 or 3 services with the first after just 1,000 miles to have an oil change and remove the swarf that had built up in the bottom of the oil sump. Read more »